The Riga girls continued their winning streak at the weekend, beating 3rd Division Sheffield in straight sets (25/13, 25/14, 25/13), to get through to the last 16 of the National Knock Out Cup. And what a challenge their next match will be when they meet the top women’s team in the country and last year’s cup winners, London Malory!! “Anything can happen in cup competitions” said Coach Tom Young “We have the advantage of being at home and, being the under dogs, will not be under the same pressure as Malory - its anybody’s match.”

The girls put in another strong performance against the weaker Sheffield team. Young had the opportunity to try out several attacking options with different combinations of players. Sheffield struggled to reach their maximum of 14 points - they had no answer to the constant hard hitting coming at them from all angles.

Highlight of the match was 6 foot Sarah Pochin’s blistering, vertical spike landing in front of the 3 metre line and literally bounced up towards the sports hall ceiling.

Time-out to discuss tactics

The team was cruising in the second and Michelle Lynam came on for Liz Young. Considering a 3 week absence due to illness, Lynam produced some accurate, well distributed sets and did some excellent pick ups behind the Riga block. Any attacks Sheffield did muster were smothered by dominating blocking courtesy of Pochin, Peryer and Woolmer.

Lynette scrapes yet another ball off the floor

Libero (back court specialist), Lynette Purkis, was outstanding again, recovering some amazing balls and putting in consistently accurate passes onto the setter’s head. Coach, Tom Young, was again delighted with his team’s performance “We’ve worked hard in training, particularly on blocking, and its really paying off - we look a different team to last season - its essential that we don’t get complacent and work on moving forward and improving game by game”.

Relive the final point of the game!